Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Bitter Rivals in review

So, bitter rivals is at an end I guess. I never did catch the bug though I did many of its special tasks: swearing at friendly players and/or myself over and over again, picking up choppa corpses for no clear reason. Some other stuff I didn't realize was part of the event, and the new scenario: Wrath of Khaine! The twisting tower!

Okay, not the biggest fan of this event. Syp I see gave it a higher rating than night of murder. Hmm. I liked night of murder much much more, though I'm not entirely sure why. Let me take a stab at it:

1. Bitter what now? Aren't rivals like competitors? As opposed to enemies? What is their rivalry? To be the most beloved melee dps class? So I don't think the title makes sense, but that underscores the issue I have with this live event: the whole thing doesn't make sense. I like the fighting orcs and dwarves, I like the pq bosses in the rvr zones, but ... these things aren't new... and they're not temporary either, right? Don't dwarves and greenskins always hate each other? Isn't that the schtick? I just don't get the everlasting enmity as a theme for a one-time event.

2. Live "Event" Part of the problem for me is that bitter rivals didn't feel like an event, it felt like a set of quests, a one-time influence bar. There was no day ... its not a holiday, its an event, fine, but there was no event either: no culminating battle, no opening of the gates, nothing to commemerate the period.

Night of murder had this problem as well, but had a couple good visual effects, particularly the burning skulls which were omnipresent in scenarios during the event.

WoW holidays for all of their schtickiness had a strong visual presence: every zone, every town, many npcs and buildings were modified, color text was modified, everything looked "holiday" and so you didn't need to check the tome to see that something was happening, you knew it.

3. Maybe that's why they're bitter ... The various bits, they just didn't make any sense together, that I could tell: I mean the swearing at people, okay sure. Weapons of the fallen, the rvr PQ, sure. But the tentacle pies, the twisting tower? Seriously, that's a big stretch. This seems to me like the "hey lets get these new classes out the door" event, with a vague theme sprinkled on top.

In short, lots to do, but no sense that you're doing anything meaningful, no sense that there's anything going on, and no real sense at all.